Riots in Paris

Tens of thousands of people are demonstrating and thousands rioting in France. CNN reports:

More than 400 people were arrested and 113 injured in Paris on Saturday in clashes between police and protesters with the “gilets jaune” or “yellow vest” movement, who are protesting rising gas prices and taxes on polluting forms of transport.

An estimated 36,000 people demonstrated in Saturday’s protests across the country Saturday, marking the third consecutive week of such demonstrations, according to the French Interior Ministry. About 53,000 participated last week and about 113,000 the week before.

Griveaux said that between 1,000 and 1,500 people joined Saturday’s demonstrations “only to fight with the police, to break and loot.” He added that those protesters “have nothing to do with the yellow vests.”

Footage shared by French police on Saturday showed a few demonstrators striking a police vehicle and smashing its windshield. Other videos captured burning cars and police firing tear gas to disperse protesters.

French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner had mentioned a state of emergency, Griveaux said. French President Emmanuel Macron, the Prime Minister and the Interior Ministry were scheduled to meet Sunday morning to “take stock of what happened yesterday and the measures we can take to avoid it,” he said. “There is no way each weekend can become a ritual of violence.”

High gas prices and a recent round of gas tax increases, part of the French government’s campaign to reduce France’s use of fossil fuels, are the notional motivations behind the demonstrations.

However, make no mistake. These demonstrations are specifically anti-Macron and the perception that the metropolitan elite are prospering at the expense of the poor, particularly the rural poor. In other words these demonstrations are France’s reaction to the same issues and the same elite strategies with respect to those issues that led to the election of President Trump here.

The American press may love Macron but his approval rating in France is 29%, the same as Theresa May’s, lower than Justin Trudeau’s (40%), and significantly lower than Donald Trump’s (43%), or Angela Merkel’s (47%).

Update

Check out the photos and videos of the rioting in this article from the Daily Mail. For this to be the start of a revolution, as claimed by the protesters:

The centre of Paris was on lockdown tonight after masked protesters stole an assault rifle from police, clashed with riot squads and set fire to cars and Christmas trees on the Champs-Elysees in furious demonstrations against the French government.

Protesters said today’s actions were ‘the start of a revolution’ that would eclipse the mass strikes and occupation of universities and factories in1968 when the country was on the cusp of civil war.

Fires and clouds of tear gas covered the French capital from early morning until late in the evening, in some of the worst violence ever seen in the French capital as more than 5,000 demonstrators brought chaos to Paris for the second week running.

will depend on whether the protests are waxing or waning. For reasons unclear to me (but which I hope someone will explain to me) the recent history of significant French riots suggests that late November-early December is prime riot time.

These riots seem very different to me from the 2005-2007 riots or 2013-2017 ones.

3 comments… add one
  • steve Link

    Could be different, but I think the French just like to riot occasionally, a national trait. We like to shoot each other, so not sure we come out ahead in any comparison.

    Steve

  • CuriousOnlooker Link

    This maybe a blip; or a foreshadow of something in a few years, but I doubt it will lead to anything memorable in the next few months.

    It’s a bit of crazy situation since Macron was pilloried when his environmental minister decided to quit on the spot in an radio interview for not being green enough. (Did that influence the gas tax hike?)

    It is worth pointing out if Macron cannot lift his approval rating out of the 20’s in 4 years that would be the 3rd “failed” French Presidentcy in a row. Given they have been center right, center left, and center, voters may choose to go radical at that point.

  • I think you’re misreading the situation. The left-right dichotomy is becoming less important than the elite-populist one.

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